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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Exploring Masters of the Universe Toy Commercials!

I love toy commercials from the 80s. I find myself trolling youtube looking for these commercials. Of course my favorite are the Masters of the Universe commercials, of course as a kid that was my favorite, so it makes sense that I would still be drawn to it. The commercials grew over the years, but they told a story. The story was usually an encounter played out by kids, of one of the bad guys trying to get castle grayskull, but sometimes it would be Skeletor running from the horde. It always ended on a cliff hanger with the idea that the ending was up to the kids watching. That they should tell the story they way they wanted to. I loved this encouragement for telling stories. Back then I felt like ti was important to tell a story with my toys. and these commercials . . . even though they were trying to sell me something it they were entertaining and to some point educational in that it got me wanting to tell a story the way the kids were on the commercial.

I am going to post a few commercials that I like a lot.

The first one is a very rare early masters commercial that was only aired once or twice in the US. so this is a rough video.

“What would you do with all of the power in the universe?”

And of course the first mainstream commercial.

The Slime Pit. This was one that I always wanted but never got. . . while I was a kid. . . I have two of these now :)

Snake mountain . . . Is waiting if you dare!

The fright zone -

The Evil Horde - This is one that is still very vivid in my mind as a child. Probably one of the best comercials they made:

Battle Bones - thought it was a cool idea then. . . and I still do

And of course there were commercials made in other countries, here is one from Germany. My only question is, why did they put Stratos in the flying vehicle ?

And finally, this is not a commercial but it is a video of a traveling toy display from the mid 80s.

So tell me, what are your favorite toy commercials? What do you remember about those vintage 80s toy commercials.